Those of us “lucky enough” to be employed in this perpetually stagnant economy have deep wisdom on an issue rarely discussed but driving us off the deep end as we dream of work force mobility. The issue is that of being glued to the chair we were sitting in when the economic music stopped three years ago. I realize this doesn’t sound particularly ominous to some, but to those of us who are working for tyrants who are using the economic downturn as a strategy for extraction of maximum benefit from a battered and beaten work force, this situation is well beyond egregious.
Previously, in our working lives, we were able to vote with our feet when our jobs were becoming incapacitating or merely tortuous. In the present economic environment, we are strapped to our chairs, and as a direct result of this imprisonment have managers who exhibit no fear of our departure from these increasingly debilitating jobs.
Those of us populating this realm of employment hell are experiencing stress on a level never before seen in the workplace, or in our lives, for that matter. We can’t make a single move without fear of perpetual unemployment.
Most of us have been sending out job applications with abandon, hoping against hope that we might find a “way out.” The problem is that with a tenth of the population being unemployed and a fourth of the employed population being disgruntled by their functional imprisonment, we are competing against supremely long odds for any change in job.
Amidst all of this turmoil, there is also the hope in the hearts of some to at least be fired without cause by these employers so they can take a few months off with bare subsistence wages to help lower their emotional stress loads as they shotgun job applications around the country from the relative safety of their home computers.
The problem with this strategy, which I know all too well, is that these employers are completely unwilling to relinquish their stores of indentured servants without a battle at the unemployment office. They will not be supporting unemployment claims without a spirited fight for those outgoing dollars. So there is, again, no easy way off this hamster wheel of perpetual dissatisfaction.
The question to be asked in this situation is how we can push back on the torturing workplace without destroying what little financial stability we have as individuals. I don’t see a simple solution for any of this, but until the politicians become focused on true work force mobility instead of corporate health through deficit expansion, there will be no change in our current circumstances. We will continue to be victims of employment adhesion in the workplace until we have options for healthy employee migration.
I have been struggling to think of an example in history that parallels this state of migration stagnation, and the only one that comes to mind is the one we feared when growing up at a time when the Eastern Bloc was forcing people to work in the same jobs for the entirety of their lives for low pay. Have the bailed-out corporations not become the “mother states” at this point in our economic history? And are we not the indentured workers in their gambit?
Take a look at it economically: These are the groups that have benefited from our labor and our tax dollars on every level, and they are now the ones holding us hostage in the workplace. Interestingly, they have become the worst example of a hegemonic ad hoc government, recycling our earnings through tax redistribution while holding us hostage to their deficits and workplace rule.
In a case of “turn about is fair play,” why don’t we break up this monopoly of corporate welfare and put real businesses, run by real entrepreneurs, back on the ground. That should solve our mobility issue overnight and give us the employment options we long for.
Are there any tea party members out there in the ether ready to take this one on?
John Rockefeller of Camden is a nonprofit development consultant.